Sunday Summary – August 9, 2015

August oozes toward the State Fair, back to school, and winter bike commuting. Did you know you can continue this week’s conversations in-depth at the streets.mn Forum? Indeed you can and perhaps you should click the Forum link in the menu bar to get there and talk about many issues raised here plus much more (make your own Embarassing Confessions of Urbanists perhaps) .

St Paul Dithers While Other Cities Move On laments the Ramsay County board decision to proceed with resurfacing Cleveland Avenue (between Summit Avenue and Highland Parkway) without restriping for bike lanes as called for in the new Saint Paul Bike Plan. The decision to keep parking but not add bike lanes is seen as a symptom of larger backward-lookingness in Saint Paul which ignores the voices asking for better bike infrastructure like the Open Letter to Joe Soucheray from a Saint Paul Minivan Mom a few weeks ago: “This is kind of like watching someone who has great talent ruin their life with drugs or alcohol. They always say they’ll get their act together tomorrow though.”

East Lakes Open Streets (Photo Scott Schaffer)

Roads to improvement

The Four-Way Stop that Almost Is shows us 10th Avenue and 25th Street in Minneapolis (via GoPro video) and the near misses which happen there because of driver confusion about who stops (and who doesn’t). The proposed solution (and request to city government) is to make this 2-way stop a 4-way stop. Commenters chew this over a bit and consider 4-way yield, “cross traffic does not stop” and related issues.

In Brainerd, Business 371 is for Business goes north to observe, in a vein similar to Saint Paul Dithers, how an “improvement” project does not move Brainerd forward. Brainerd’s South 6th Street (still marked as “Business 371″) is “by far the most direct option to get downtown” and scheduled for reconstruction by MnDOT in 2017. Offered options to rebuild it in its current 5-lane stroad design or to narrow the road to 3 lanes (with added sidewalks and plantings). Brainerd went with the 5-lane option ostensibly to serve the businesses along the route. Sean Hayford O’Leary uses this project decision to ask about MnDOT’s commitment to its own Complete Streets policy as well as Brainerd’s retro-vision. Comments also contain some feedback from a Brainerd Councilperson who read the post and adds a bit of illumination about the thinking behind the decision.

Brainerd’s South 6th Street (there is a sidewalk underneath that snow)

Day trips

Main Street – Hutchinson, Minnesota continues the Main Street series of small towns around Minnesota. This week, visit Hutchinson, 61 miles west of Minneapolis and founded by the musical Hutchinson brothers — “abolitionists and among the biggest musical acts of the day, touring and provoking both imitators and satirists.”

Halloween, Hedges (because trees don’t alliterate) and Hydrants helps us toward the end of summer and into fall with this photo essay of a lovely bike ride last October through Saint Paul’s Macalester-Groveland, Merriam Park, and South Como neighborhoods with special attention to fire hydrants (and other details we might not otherwise notice). For more of Wolfie Browender’s rides, click here.

State Theater, Hutchinson

Audiovisual department

Video:BIKES vs CARS – TRAILER I is a trailer, obviously, for a film which approaches bikes as a powerful instrument of grassroots social change.